How to design breakthrough inventions

Charlie Rose: It's not rocket science, it's what?

David Kelley: It's empathetic.

Charlie Rose: Empathetic?

David Kelley: It's empathetic to people. Like really like try to really understand what they really value.

Now IDEO is working with clients all over the globe. They're using that same intuitive human point of view to improve access to safe drinking water in India and Africa, redesigning school systems in Peru and helping North Face expand their brand into China.

Kelley has always been good at coming up with ingenious solutions to everyday problems. His first job was at Boeing. He was part of a team that designed the lights around the passenger windows, as well as a "milestone in aviation history": the lavatory occupied sign.

But he says the seeds of who he is today can be traced to his childhood in Barberton, Ohio, "the passenger tire capital of the world," where he learned the value of building with his hands.

David Kelley: In my family, if the washer broke, you didn't go order the part, you went down, tore the washer apart, and tried to make a new part to fix it. Because that was part of - that was part of the game - that you know, you were capable of fixing things.

Charlie Rose: And that was something that was part of you too. You were a tinkerer who wanted to take it apart and put it back together?

David Kelley: Yeah, one of the best stories my mother tells, I took the family piano apart but it wasn't that interesting to put it back together so it just kind of - the piano sat there with this big harp kind of thing hanging out for most of my childhood.

He was in his 20s, working unhappily as an engineer, when he heard about Stanford University's product design program. What he learned there would transform his life as a design thinker.

Charlie Rose: And so what happened when you came to Stanford?

David Kelley: So I get to Stanford and it was heaven. Stanford was the synthesis of kind of art and engineering and it was wonderful.

It was shortly after that that Steve Jobs came into the picture. For over 30 years they worked together and were close friends.

Charlie Rose: What's the biggest misconception about him?

David Kelley: I think the big misconception is around that he was kind of like, you know, like malicious. He was like, trying to be mean to people. He wasn't. He was just trying to get things done right and it was-- you just had to learn how to react to that. He did some lovely things for me in my life.

Jobs introduced Kelley to his wife KC Branscomb. And Steve Jobs was also there for Kelley when the unthinkable happened. In 2007, Kelley was diagnosed with throat cancer - and given a 40 percent chance of survival. Jobs, already suffering from his own deadly cancer, gave him some advice.

David Kelley: He came over and said, "Look, you know, don't consider any alternative - go straight to Western medicine. Don't try any herbs or anything."

Charlie Rose: Why do you think Steve said, "Don't look for alternative medicine, go straight to the hard stuff?"

David Kelley: I think he had made- in his mind, he had made the mistake that he had tried to cure his pancreatic cancer in other ways other than, I mean, he just said, "Don't mess around." You know, when we both had cancer at the same time was when I got really close to him and I was at home, like sitting around in my skivvies, you know, waiting for my next dose of something and I think it was the day after the iPhone was announced. And he had one for me, right?

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[jackjackson78958]

There you go again attempting to changing history. David Kelly did not invent the computer mouse. Steve Jobs stole the design from Xerox after seeing a demonstration in the late '70's. Kelly may have improved it or designed it according to Jobs' specifications but he did not invent it.

If you google it, another result you get is that Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse. It was invented in 1964 and he received a patent (computer mouse U.S. Patent # 3,541,541) in 1970 before Apple even existed which started in 1976.

[sergemalov]

Perhaps, that is why Steve Jobs said: "I don't want somebody with one of your flaky degrees." David Kelley's IDEO looks like a waste of time mostly.